pantsukki wrote:Unfortunately the same trait doesn't stack, ie. one only gets the siege benefit once from pioneers and engineers.

That's certainly how the passage in question reads, but I'm wondering if the "and" might not be additive rather than inclusive. Otherwise, since the presence of one pre-empts the function of the other, it makes little sense to stack both Pioneer and Engineer units in the standard Army establishment provided at game start. Granted the Pioneer has a slightly stronger combat value than the Engineer, but if its only contribution is to throw four more combat points into the pot it seems a paltry benefit - especially when that additional combat power is lost with new builds.

I guess one could argue that as the war progresses and economies tighten Pioneers could be built as a kind of cheap-jack Engineer unit, but that doesn't explain why they're then included in the initially deployed Army establishments. Just another of the marvelous mysteries of the rulebook.

My guess is that some of the starting armies have both engineers and pioneers for mostly flavour reasons.

Personally I think that with the current set of (visible) bonuses the pioneer unit is close to useless. Why use any resources to gain a highly situational (siege) bonus, when one can invest a little more in an engineer unit and also gain the defense bonus.

My guess is that some of the starting armies have both engineers and pioneers for mostly flavour reasons.

Personally I think that with the current set of (visible) bonuses the pioneer unit is close to useless. Why use any resources to gain a highly situational (siege) bonus, when one can invest a little more in an engineer unit and also gain the defense bonus.

Just checked as you suggested and you're dead right. Given that, I'd go even further than your final paragraph. Why in the world would one ever build Siege Artillery when the same trait can be had from a lowly Pioneer with all the remaining money, time, and materials available to churn out regular artillery?

It's not called Siege Artillery - Super Heavy Artillery instead - but fortress-busting was its historical purpose. For Germany one battery delivers 68 combat strength for 400 gold and 1000 materials with a build period of 120 days. Contrast that with German Medium Artillery which puts out 24 combat strength for 60 gold and 75 material and can be built in 45 days. I can therefore push out a pioneer and six medium arty batteries in half the time it takes me to wrangle out a single super-heavy and come away with more than twice the combat power in a third of the time with 40 gold and 550 materials left in the bank.

Granted it will cost me way more manpower than the big gun, but given that I can spread that manpower around wherever I might need it while my big-banger will be confined to rails or non-wild terrain, I just can't see a case for going anywhere near the type.

The case against ordinary Heavy Artillery is much less extreme but you still get more bang for your buck, and way more mobility, going the medium + pioneer route.

My understanding is that combat power is an approximation of the unit's combat prowess, ie. a unit with 80 combat power isn't necessarily twice more effective than one with 40. I would imagine (and hope!) that heavy and super heavy artillery offer things besides just their raw combat power, for example being more effective against entrenchments.

It'd be interesting to know what the algorithm for combat power is - especially whether it's simply cumulative or includes a modifier for elements involved. But whatever it is I'm figuring 144 has to be better than 68. Equally, it would definitely be useful to know what benefits the heavier hitters might deliver beyond what the mediums have to offer on things like reducing entrenchment modifiers. My central point, however, is that whatever these effects might be, the facts that pioneers offer exactly the same siege modifier as the heavies and that such modifiers are not cumulative combine to make nonsense of the entire siege process.